Catechetical Sunday

Long before anyone was crowned the next Iron Chef, my mother was at work with her own secret ingredients in our home kitchen stadium. I can still smell the aroma of my mother’s culinary craft. I learned how to cook from my mother, who learned how to cook from her mother, who learned from her mother, and so on. I learned by doing. Whether she was kneading dough or chopping celery, I was right beside her kneading, chopping, measuring, whisking, beating, and doing whatever else was needed. At first I learned how to follow a recipe, but the more time I spent in the kitchen with Mom, I learned that being a cook meant so much more. It meant being willing to be immersed in a lifelong process. It meant tasting everything, which sometimes led to altering recipes or throwing them out completely and starting over. It also meant learning that the goal of cooking is to feed others.

The way I learned to cook is similar to the way we learn our faith. We are often drawn to faith by someone whose faith inspires us and who shows us the way to faith. We learn a lot just by being with those persons, observing how they live and then eventually doing what they do. As children, we learn the basics of our faith, memorizing the sign of the cross or the Lord’s Prayer, but as we grow, we discover that our faith is more than knowledge alone. We eventually come to understand that simply learning about our faith is not enough--more is required. We must learn to live as people of faith—to trust God. Eventually we learn that, like food, our faith is not just for ourselves but is meant to be shared with others.

This weekend we celebrate Catechetical Sunday, a day set aside to reflect on the role each of us plays in handing on our faith. At every Mass, we will call forth and bless our elementary, middle school, high school, adult catechists, members of our adult and children’s initiation teams, and the pastoral facilitators of our Small Faith Communities. They remind us that faith is a lifelong response to God’s love. At St. Thomas Aquinas, there are opportunities to both deepen our faith and pass it on.